>>Luckily, that was >>considerable, even if he had lost his helmet on the way through >>- whatever the hell that was - and so had to rely only on >>shifts of his body weight and the X-15A-2's limited thrust vectoring >>capabilities to steer. >>Not gonna lie, until my brain caught up with context I pictured trying >to steer an X-15 by throwing yourself around the cockpit.

Heh, yeah, I suspect that wouldn't really work very well. :)

It's actually an extension of the way the nomenclature works in Strike Witches. All their Striker Units have the same designations as real-life WWII aircraft (Britannian witch Lynne Bishop's is a Spitfire, for instance, while Karlslanders Gertrud Barkhorn and Erica Hartmann fly an Fw 190 and a Bf 109, respectively), so it seemed only sporting to do the same with the name of Gryphon's (slightly more advanced) jetpack.

(Amusingly enough, this convention even extends to non-fighter aircraft; there's a Karlslander Nachthexe in the Strike Witches movie whose ungainly but heavily armed Striker Unit is a Bf 110. :)